Thursday, July 14, 2011

A Point for Us Pedants

Charles Duncombe says an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half.

Mr Duncombe says when recruiting staff he has been "shocked at the poor quality of written English".

Sales figures suggest misspellings put off consumers who could have concerns about a website's credibility, he says.

The concerns were echoed by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), whose head of education and skills warned that too many employers were having to invest in remedial literacy lessons for their staff.

Mr Duncombe, who runs travel, mobile phones and clothing websites, says that poor spelling is a serious problem for the online economy.

Well, not only that but poor spelling makes ya look like a bleedin' IDIOT. We shall not go into poor grammar, we'll just take the one point and leave it at that. I have very little sympathy for poor spellers as there are tools... like Firefox... that flag spelling errors before you put your pearls o' wisdom out on these inter-tubes. It's a real idiot that ignores the availability of that sorta stuff.

In re: the graphic. The lose/loose thang might prolly be my Numero Uno pet peeve. Any "looser" that uses that terminology is automajically disqualified from serious consideration about any-frickin'-thing. We'll accept "looser" when it comes to describing wimmen we meet at the bar. Otherwise? Get OFF my frickin' lawn.

Having spent about a week learning Italian, restaurants kill me with their "panini sandwiches." Panini is Italian for sandwiches. Plural and everything. And a sign above a deli in Kelowna read (Christ it hurts just to remember it): Panini Sandwich's.

Oh Andy, I can beat that. There is a cafe in TX that serves "casa dillas" rather than quesadillas. The word "fajita" is actually the Spanish word for flank steak. So when someone says they want chicken fajitas, it really makes no sense.

I'm know grate speller, but now I use Firefox to ade me. I don't want anyone to thank I'm a looser.

What gets ignored is how did things get to this point? When I think about my years in school spelling and grammar and English were required in every grade through public school. That is at least 12 years of being taught these things.

How is it that many kids don't know the basics?

How do you get past the 2nd or 3rd without knowing the difference between "their, there, they're" and any such similar words?

Yet we are constantly told that the schools need more money. Why is that? The cost of schooling keeps going up beyond just keeping in pace with inflation, but to a level where it gets a higher and higher percentage of the tax dollars spent in local municipalities each year. The result are things like this?

What a bunch of LOOSERS. ;) Opps, I guess I soiled myself.

I can understand some misspelled words, I can't understand misused words when it becomes the norm.

Andy: Heh. The translation from one language to another can be QUITE painful, no matter the native language and the target language. The Second Mrs. Pennington's rice bowl was translations, for a while... and she showed me some doozies.

I'm know grate speller, but now I use Firefox to ade me. I don't want anyone to thank I'm a looser.

It took more than a lil bit o' talent to create that sentence, Lou.

Anon: I'm not sure how thangs got to this point, I only know they HAVE. It's a sad, sad thing, too.